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Just so you know, I have been railing against using the "Technical Discussions" subtopic, because it ranks posts by "popularity" by default instead of chronological (although, yes, someone in the "know" can manually change the order back to chronological; BUT new members, such as @Destro don't know this!). Just as I was doing the research over in the DB20-G Topic, I came across some earlier links to discussions in Technical Discussions from years ago and when ranked by popularity, there are posts that are just plain out of context: Not everybody "quotes" the prior topic they are responding to; sometimes they just respond to the most recent prior post and when ranked by popularity, context is lost. In my case I use General Discussions or Equipment Reviews subtopics when I post.

This ^

That's not a squelch tail. A squelch tail is a very quick loud static sound usually. Not more than a second or so. Unless I'm mistaken it sounds like it's something with your radio. Especially if you have to key up the mic to get it to go away.

The legal way to get 50 watts out of the duplexer is to buy an all in one repeater. The duplexer is internal to the repeater unit and the output on the antenna connection can't be more than 50 watts. In order to do that you have to put 60-70 watts into the duplexer which is fine as long as the output on the connector isn't above 50 watts. I'm running such a repeater.

Length, SWR and how high you can get the antenna will all add range.

I relocked my Anytone back to GMRS. What I did was I used the Radioddity CPS software to setup Channels 31 - 39 as a repeat of Channels 23 - 30 as "dummy" repeater settings and hope to use the keypad/mic to change the Tones needed on the fly! Refresh my memory. How do we manually set the Tone from the keypad/mic in Channels 23 - 30 in locked mode, so that we can see if this will work on the dummy repeater Channels 31 - 39? Here is that "locked" codeplug: Anytone AT-779UV GMRS 202509071200.dat

Well, lets address these separately. The answer is "none of the above". It's logarithmic. Calculating range verses distance in free-space (not accounting for the curve of the Earth nor obstacles) involves a complex formula, based on things like the distance between the antennas, the frequency, the gain of both the transmitting antenna and the receiving antenna, and the attenuation value of the atmosphere. If we assume that neither antenna has gain, at 465MHz (about the center of the GMRS frequencies), 1 mile of free space has about 90dB of signal attenuation. At 10 miles, there is 110dB of attenuation. At 100 miles, there is 130dB of attenuation. So, lets say you are transmitting a 1 watt signal to a station 1 mile away. Your signal will be reduced to 1 nano-watt, or about 224 micro-volts. This is just a little higher than the 60% mark of receive sensitivity for most retail OTC radios. That station can receive your signal, but its about 60% audio and 40% static. It's usable, but a lot of static. If you want a station 10 miles away you hear you just as well, you need to increase your power to 100 watts. If you want to have a station 100 miles away be able to receive your signal at the same levels, you would have to increase your power to 10,000 watts. As you can see, trying to increase your range by increasing your power becomes very impractical. Most of the time we look at things like using antennas with high gain or increasing receive sensitivity and selectivity. For example, if you use that same 1 watt with a 14dB gain beam antenna on both ends of the communication path, that would be like increasing your power to 630 watts and both antennas having no gain. To make life easy for yourself, to figure out how much more power you need, just estimate foliage loss using the 15–20 dB rule of thumb. Increasing power does help penetrate through trees and buildings. It does help fill-in hole and dead spots a bit too... but like free-space attenuation... more power has massively diminishing returns. If you want to "know" actual numbers to calculate the RF power needed to penetrate foliage, you need to determine the signal attenuation caused by the vegetation. You need to use the frequency, vegetation depth you want to penetrate, the water content in the leaves and trees, and the path geometry. The angle the signal gets bent to as the signal passes through the foliage affects the amount of attenuation. Vegetation type and density affects signal scattering and absorption, too. And did I mention this changes seasonally? And the more dramatic the season changes, the more dramatic the variations will be.

That’s why I unlock mine and use my FCC-friendly GMRS codeplug for "unlocked" mode:

I did also take off all my RX CTCSS tones off on the repeaters. Should I put those back on?

Hey, on my Retevis RA25, I sometimes get that dreaded squelch tail after someone transmits from a repeater. Not all repeaters, but some are really bad, like 10-30 seconds. It will stop if I key the PTT. I have searched all over Google to find the answer. I have found several different settings in the Retevis CPS, but I have no idea what I should set them at. Here is a post from Reddit asking about the same issue and settings:

My RT97L has been working great for my ranch & firearms range since I upgraded to the better cable.

I climb the tallest tree around before attempting to use my radio...

Hey folks, I know many people dislike the idea of linking repeaters, seemingly (imho) due to some folks not understanding the FCC rules and the purpose of GMRS radio. That said, the Retevis RT97L is FCC type approved radio, providing RF linking of repeaters, allowing owners to create point-to-point repeater networks. I am hoping this thread doesn't devolve into yet another debate about linking, but rather just helping me with some quick feedback on the RT97L. I have a question for those of you you owned an operated a Retevis RT97L. After reading about it in another thread, I figured I would look into it as an affordable portable solution. While reading about it, I noticed that the repeater has two channels that allow simultaneous transmit and receive for RF linking (they refer to as daisy chaining). Has anyone here RF-linked 2 or more of them together? If so, what is your opinion about the efficacy of the solution? Is it a solid solution with good audio quality? I am really interested in this idea, both for GMRS and for Amateur Radio emergency operations. I worked an event this weekend where our two repeater links were not available, causing a huge hole in our coverage. It would have been great if I could have driven to a high spot in the area needing coverage, dropped a portable repeater and RF linked it to our primary repeater. Normally, RF linking repeaters nearly doubles the cost of each station. Given that Retevis sells the OTC GMRS version, and will custom configure a unit with requested frequencies for amateur radio, at about $700 each for the bundle, these seem like a really nice alternative to spending $8k-$10k on 2 repeaters and RF linking gear.

24 watts compared to 5 watts will get you a slightly better signal at greater distance than the 5 watts. The difference between 24 watts and 50 watts will be less noticeable. Yes, more power goes through foliage and walls better. But the real secret to getting farther range is to put a very good antenna up as high as you can.

Sooo...jumping after reading. I understand that more Watts doesn't necessarily ,equate to more fars. I realize from here that my repeater pushing 24 Watts will work almost as well as 50 Watts. My question is about Watts vs fars and obstacles. Is Watts vs fars linear, geometric, exponential? For example: 5W output on the repeater vs. 24W output more drastic improvement than 24W to 50W. Second part is: does more Watts afford more 'muscle' to propagate through foliage? (understanding that height and antenna is king here. I can not get above canopy but can get to about 70')

Thank you Gang. I am aware that RG58 is not a good choice. That was what was on hand at the time to play here in the shack. I have and am using RG213 and KMR400 for testing and radio play.

We use a Retevis 97S for woods and neighborhood communications. Incredibly easy to set up. I use an Ecoflow power bank and a j-pole antenna on a painters stick.

I’m also using a DB-20 with the midland ghost. It is the second one though. The first got extremely hot so I sent it back. The second one is working very well.

By no means is this scientific, but with a UV-5r on one watt and HYS 8" antenna, I can open and converse on a 2m repeater 20 miles away, although the report is quite a bit of static. From inside the house, I can't even open the repeater with that antenna. When I switch to the HYS 15" antenna, I can converse from inside the house with reports of "some" static. Clearly, the antenna does make a difference, and in my experience, a longer antenna usually works better. The trade-off, of course, is that it is less convenient than a shorter antenna. YMMV

Just an FYI, It's possible that one of the other radios chirp file will work with it but chirp isn't listing for the Abbree specifically at this time.

I had the same experience with the 2x4SR. SWR was (IIRC) ~1.5:1 on 1.25 meters and lower on all the others. Unfortunately, the local 1.25 meter repeater is as dead as disco. I can trigger it and get its automatic ID, but I never get a response from a live person, so I don't know if the antenna actually works well in that band. I'm studying for my General license mostly so I can use and become familiar with HF modes of communication before any sort of disaster occurs. Repeaters are good, but after Hurricane Helene, only one or maybe two (IIRC) repeaters were functioning in the affected area. It's not hard to imagine a scenario where all the repeaters within range of me are rendered inoperative for some period of time. Before that happens, I want to have HF equipment and know how to use it. I'd like to be able to get a signal out at least a few hundred miles. I probably won't get much excitement out of just "making contacts" but I could be wrong.

Gotcha. But I believe they're all on CHIRP now, so that should take care of that issue.

Yes the Retevis RA25, and now Abbree also has one on Amazon. And it's $10 cheaper than the others.

I think the issue he's pointing out is that the Radioddity and Anytone seem to be fully compatible (IE: running the same software and can read / write with each other's CPS) but the Retevis didn't seem to play nice with AT / RO software. And once he used the Retevis software, it worked. Small issue, but it sounds like there's some small difference. If you use a Retevis radio with Retevis CPS, you probably won't have any real issues.